Reviews

BECOMING GOOD AMERICAN SCHOOLS:The Struggle for Civic
Virtue in Education Reform, by Jeannie Oakes, Karen Hunter Quartz,
Steve Ryan, and Martin Lipton. (Jossey-Bass, $28.95.) From 1991 to
1996, detracking advocate Oakes of the University of California at Los
Angeles and three like-minded colleagues studied 16 middle schools in
five states. They wanted to gauge how well these schools had
implemented the progressive reforms of the Carnegie Foundation's 1989
report Turning Points, which, among other things, urged middle schools
to abandon tracking, implement cooperative-learning techniques, and
promote close adult-student relationships. Although many educators in
the schools had done their best to make the reforms work, they were
thwarted, the researchers found, by the sheer weight and inertia of the
status quo. "At every turn," the authors write on the first pages of
this massive book about their findings, "their commitment to the common
good confronted the culture's equally strong (or stronger) commitment
to the individual's right to determine what is in his or her best
interest and to the preeminence of marketplace values."

This sentence is crucial, for it reveals the polarizing
you're-with-us-or-against-us mind-set of both the authors and the
educational left in general. On one side are the good guys, those who
support classroom reforms—detracking, cooperative learning,
etc.—as a way of creating a more caring, socially just society;
on the other hand are the bad, mean-spirited elitists who undermine
progressive, equity-driven reform. The villains come in many guises,
though they are most often recidivistic veteran teachers and affluent,
self-serving parents. What characterizes both sets of naysayers is
their support for tracking; they are going to fight to the bitter end
for honors classes and other forms of ability grouping.

As Oakes and company demonstrate here, tracking and reform are
particularly contentious when it comes to the teaching of math. Most
math teachers stridently resist heterogeneous groupings because, as one
teacher told the researchers, "the top kids get screwed"; these
students are forced to bide their time while hampered teachers explain
concepts over and over to their less adept peers. Parents of bright
children tend to feel the same. They oppose anything that's going to
slow their kids down. The authors describe how a group of parents at
one Vermont middle school fought to rid the curriculum of a popular,
innovative math program because they believed it was not preparing
their children for the rigors of college.

The authors condemn these parents, many of them mathematicians and
scientists, for trying to kill what they believe is an outstanding math
curriculum. Yet the parents seem to have legitimate reasons for
questioning the program. Besides, shouldn't the concerns of those who
have already mastered math and science count for something? But the
credentials of the parents don't sway the researchers. As far as
they're concerned, this is a group of pushy elitist parents who have
bought into honors classes, traditional pedagogy, and competition only
because they are selfishly safeguarding their own children's
educations.

Few would deny that pushy parents can be a real problem or that
tracking can help some students at the expense of the rest. But the
authors' relentless insistence that public schools must be about civic
virtue as opposed to individual advancement ensures that their position
will be marginalized. To a significant extent, public schooling must be
about helping individual children learn and eventually succeed in what
the authors sneeringly refer to as "the marketplace." Otherwise, only
the poorest, most captive families will remain in the system.

The noxious implication here is that the only parents concerned
about their children's futures are white and affluent. But this, of
course, is far from the case. In my own besieged school district of
Oakland, California, minority parents are outraged that their children
are not acquiring the basic skills they need. These parents are all for
civic virtue, but what matters far more—and understandably
so—is that their children receive the kind of education that will
ensure them a secure and prosperous place in the world.

CHARTER SCHOOLS IN ACTION:Renewing Public Education,
by Chester Finn, Bruno Manno, and Gregg Vanourek. (Princeton, $27.95.)
Having visited more than 100 very different kinds of charter schools in
recent years, the authors, hardly unbiased observers, conclude that
such schools are the wave of the future. It's not that they believe all
charter schools will succeed—one of the virtues of charters, they
argue, is that the poor ones will simply fail and disappear. Rather,
the three argue that charter schools represent the demise of our
one-size-fits-all approach to public education. Their argument goes
like this: Since nobody on either side of the political spectrum
believes that a single public school curriculum or pedagogy will serve
the needs of all students, we might as well let a thousand flowers
bloom. As they envision it, public schools will be redefined to mean
those that are open to the public rather than those funded by the
public.

One concern that has dogged the charter school movement from the
start is the question of accountability. Under a system of largely
deregulated, independent schools, how can we ensure that each is
adequately and equitably providing a sound education? The authors place
enormous faith in a kind of "transparent" Darwinian system of
accountability, in which only the fittest schools survive. Schools,
their thinking goes, will be compelled to publish scads of information
and data-detailing their philosophies, test scores, finances, and
more-so that parents can make informed decisions about where to send
their kids. Those that fail to attract students will simply die
off.

Such a system rests on the idea that parents will make good
decisions. Yet while some parents have the education and wherewithal to
choose wisely, others do not. What happens to the children whose
parents make bad choices-or don't choose at all? This is a critical
question that the authors of this compelling but all-too-optimistic
book fail to adequately address.

THE FEEL-GOOD CURRICULUM:The Dumbing Down of America's
Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem, by Maureen Stout. (Perseus, $24.)
As her title suggests, Stout is brimming with indignation at the way
schools have sacrificed rigor in the interest of making students feel
OK about themselves. From the students' perspective, she argues, school
has become "a place to learn about ourselves."

But one has to wonder where this California ed school professor has
been for the past decade. After all, it's been nearly 15 years since
the members of the much-satirized California Task Force on Self-Esteem
slipped out of the spotlight and back to their encounter groups and Zen
retreats. These days, few people talk about protecting students'
vulnerable esteem. In state after state, the watchwords are
"standards," "accountability," and "retention."

In all fairness, Stout does make the case that the so-called
self-esteem movement has adopted new, less-obvious guises. She
believes, for example, that Howard Gardner's wildly popular theory of
multiple intelligences is a great way for teachers to praise Johnny for
his, say, kinetic skills, even if he can't read or write. And she's not
keen on Daniel Goleman's theory of emotional intelligence, either.
Being able to handle stress or accept yourself isn't necessarily going
to help you pass algebra.

Still, while there may be something to Stout's argument, her
insistence that it is all love and mush out there just doesn't ring
true.

—David Ruenzel

Vol. 11, Issue 8, Page 59

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